The diagnostics and monitoring of structures, such as that carried out in the structural health monitoring field, are often accomplished by employing arrays of sensing elements. Such sensing elements, i.e., various types of sensors, actuators, and the like, detect and analyze the behavior and response of various structures. Accordingly, structures often must have a variety of sensing elements placed at various locations. Because individual sensing elements must often be placed separately, affixing a large array of such sensing elements can be tedious and time consuming. In addition, as each individual sensing element can require one or, commonly, multiple wires, large arrays of sensing elements can require a large number of individual wires, which may be difficult to handle and keep track of. The securing of such large numbers of wires can often be painstaking and time consuming, as well.
It is therefore desirable to package such sensing elements and their wires together in such a manner that the abovementioned difficulties are avoided, or at least reduced. Similarly, it is also desirable to develop methods of achieving such packaging. In this manner, the need to handle large numbers of sensing elements individually can be reduced, thus increasing the speed and efficiency with which structures can be prepared for structural health monitoring.